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The Chief Element In The Art Of Statesmanship Under Modern Conditions Is The Ability To Elucidate The Confused And Clamorous Interests Which Converge Upon The Seat Of Government. It Is An Ability To Penetrate From The Na?ve Self-interest Of Each Group To Its Permanent And Real Interest. Statesmanship Consists In Giving The People Not What They Want But What They Will Learn To Want.

-Walter Lippmann

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The Chief Element In

Walter Lippmann

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The Chief Element In The Art Of Statesmanship Under Modern Conditions Is The Ability To Elucidate The Confused And Clamorous Interests Which Converge Upon The Seat Of Government. It Is An Ability To Penetrate From The Na?ve Self-interest Of Each Group To Its Permanent And Real Interest. Statesmanship Consists In Giving The People Not What They Want But What They Will Learn To Want.

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You Cannot Endow Even The Best Machine With Initiative; The Jolliest Steamroller Will Not Plant Flowers.

What The Public Does Is Not To Express Its Opinions But To Align Itself For Or Against A Proposal. If That Theory Is Accepted, We Must Abandon The Notion That Democratic Government Can Be The Direct Expression Of The Will Of The People. We Must Abandon The Notion That The People Govern. Instead, We Must Adopt The Theory That, By Their Occasional Mobilizations As A Majority, People Support Or Oppose The Individuals Who Actually Govern. We Must Say That The Popular Will Does Not Direct Continuously But That It Intervenes Occasionally.

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Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern.

Unless Our Ideas Are Questioned, They Become Part Of The Furniture Of Eternity.

Certainly He Is Not Of The Generation That Regards Honesty As The Best Policy. However, He Does Regard It As A Policy.

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Even God Has Been Defended With Nonsense.

Men Can Know More Than Their Ancestors Did If They Start With A Knowledge Of What Their Ancestors Had Already Learned....that Is Why A Society Can Be Progressive Only If It Conserves Its Traditions.

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Increasing Knowledge

The Function Of News Is To Signalize An Event, The Function Of Truth Is To Bring To Light The Hidden Facts, To Set Them In Relation With Each Other, And Make A Picture Of Reality On Which Men Can Act.

Ours Is A Problem In Which Deception Has Become Organized And Strong; Where Truth Is Poisoned At Its Source; One In Which The Skill Of The Shrewdest Brains Is Devoted To Misleading A Bewildered People.

There Is No Arguing With The Pretenders To A Divine Knowledge And To A Divine Mission. They Are Possessed With The Sin Of Pride, They Have Yielded To The Perennial Temptation.

If All Power Is In The People, If There Is No Higher Law Than Their Will, And If By Counting Their Votes, Their Will May Be Ascertained - Then The People May Entrust All Their Power To Anyone, And The Power Of The Pretender And The Usurper Is Then Legitimate. It Is Not To Be Challenged Since It Came Originally From The Sovereign People.

In Really Hard Times The Rules Of The Game Are Altered. The Inchoate Mass Begins To Stir. It Becomes Potent, And When It Strikes, It Strikes With Incredible Emphasis. Those Are The Rare Occasions When A National Will Emerges From The Scattered, Specialized, Or Indifferent Blocs Of Voters Who Ordinarily Elect The Politicians. Those Are For Good Or Evil The Great Occasions In A Nation's History.

We Must Protect The Right Of Our Opponents To Speak Because We Must Hear What They Have To Say.

Most Men, After A Little Freedom, Have Preferred Authority With The Consoling Assurances And The Economy Of Effort It Brings.

The Self-evident Truth Which Makes Men Invincible Is That Inalienably They Are Inviolable Persons.

The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opposition Than From His Fervent Supporters.

Between Ourselves And Our Real Natures We Interpose That Wax Figure Of Idealizations And Selections Which We Call Our Character.

When Men Are Brought Face To Face With Their Opponents, Forced To Listen And Learn And Mend Their Ideas, They Cease To Be Children And Savages And Begin To Live Like Civilized Men. Then Only Is Freedom A Reality, When Men May Voice Their Opinions Because They Must Examine Their Opinions.

The Devil Is Merely A Fallen Angel, And When God Lost Satan He Lost One Of His Best Lieutenants.

Leaders Are The Custodians Of A Nation's Ideals, Of The Beliefs It Cherishes, Of Its Permanent Hopes, Of The Faith Which Makes A Nation Out Of A Mere Aggregation Of Individuals.

A Long Life In Journalism Convinced Me Many Presidents Ago That There Should Be A Large Air Space Between A Journalist And The Head Of A State.

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For The Most Part We Do Not First See, And Then Define, We Define First And Then See. In The Great Blooming, Buzzing Confusion Of The Outer World We Pick Out What Our Culture Has Already Defined For Us, And We Tend To Perceive That Which We Have Picked Out In The Form Stereotyped For Us By Our Culture.

A Democracy Which Fails To Concentrate Authority In An Emergency Inevitably Falls Into Such Confusion That The Ground Is Prepared For The Rise Of A Dictator.

A Regime, An Established Order, Is Rarely Overthrown By A Revolutionary Movement; Usually A Regime Collapses Of Its Own Weakness And Corruption And Then A Revolutionary Movement Enters Among The Ruins And Takes Over The Powers That Have Become Vacant.

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The Decay Of Decency In The Modern Age, The Rebellion Against Law And Good Faith, The Treatment Of Human Beings As Things, As The Mere Instruments Of Power And Ambition, Is Without A Doubt The Consequence Of The Decay Of The Belief In Man As Something More Than An Animal Animated By Highly Conditioned Reflexes And Chemical Reactions. For, Unless Man Is Something More Than That, He Has No Rights That Anyone Is Bound To Respect, And There Are No Limitations Upon His Conduct Which He Is Bound To Obey.

And The Principle Which Distinguishes Democracy From All Other Forms Of Government Is That In A Democracy The Opposition Not Only Is Tolerated As Constitutional But Must Be Maintained Because It Is In Fact Indispensable.

One Might Point To The Great Illumination That Has Resulted From Freud's Analysis Of The Abracadabra Of Our Dreams. No One Can Any Longer Dismiss The Fantasy Because It Is Logically Inconsistent, Superficially Absurd, Or Objectively Untrue.

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The Simple Opposition Between The People And Big Business Has Disappeared Because The People Themselves Have Become So Deeply Involved In Big Business.

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The News And The Truth Are Not The Same Thing.

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People Who Are Tremendously Concerned About Their Identification, Their Individuality, Their Self-expression, Or Their Sense Of Humor, Always Seem To Be Missing The Very Things They Pursue.

The Thinker Dies, But His Thoughts Are Beyond The Reach Of Destruction. Men Are Mortal; But Ideas Are Immortal.

Social Movements Are At Once The Symptoms And The Instruments Of Progress. Ignore Them And Statesmanship Is Irrelevant; Fail To Use Them And It Is Weak.

The Great Social Adventure Of America Is No Longer The Conquest Of The Wilderness But The Absorption Of Fifty Different Peoples.

The Man Who Raises New Issues Has Always Been Distasteful To Politicians. He Musses Up What Had Been So Tidily Arranged.

We Know That It Is Possible To Harness Desire To Many Interests, That Evil Is One Form Of A Desire, And Not The Nature Of It.

It Is Better To Catch The Idol-maker Than To Smash Each Idol.

There Can Be No Liberty For A Community Which Lacks The Means By Which To Detect Lies.

To Understand Is Not Only To Pardon, But In The End To Love.

The Final Test Of A Leader Is That He Leaves Behind Him In Other Men The Conviction And The Will To Carry On.

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The Wiser A Man Is, It Seems To Me, The More Vividly He Can See The Future As Part Of The Evolving Present. He Doesn't Break The Flow Of Life, He Directs It, Hastens It, But Preserves Its Continuity.

When Everyone Thinks The Same, Nobody Is Thinking.

Liberty May Be An Uncomfortable Blessing Unless You Know What To Do With It. That Is Why So Many Freed Slaves Returned To Their Masters, Why So Many Emancipated Women Are Only Too Glad To Give Up The Racket And Settle Down. For Between Announcing That You Will Live Your Own Life, And The Living Of It Lie The Real Difficulties Of Any Awakening.

When All Think Alike, Then No One Is Thinking

Funny Inspirational

A Man Cannot Be A Good Doctor And Keep Telephoning His Broker Between Patients Nor A Good Lawyer With His Eye On The Ticker.

Happiness Cannot Be The Reward Of Virtue; It Must Be The Intelligible Consequence Of It.

When A Man And Woman Are Successfully In Love, Their Whole Activity Is Energized And Victorious. They Walk Better, Their Digestion Improves, They Think More Clearly, Their Secret Worries Drop Away, The World Is Fresh And Interesting, And They Can Do More Than They Dreamed That They Could Do. In Love Of This Kind Sexual Intimacy Is Not The Dead End Of Desire As It Is In Romantic Or Promiscuous Love, But Periodic Affirmation Of The Inward Delight Of Desire Pervading An Active Life.

Ideals Are An Imaginative Understanding Of That Which Is Desirable In That Which Is Possible.

Popular Government Has Not Yet Been Proved To Guarantee, Always And Everywhere, Good Government.

Very Few Established Institutions, Governments And Constitutions ...are Ever Destroyed By Their Enemies Until They Have Been Corrupted And Weakened By Their Friends.

The Size Of A Man's Income Has Considerable Effect On His Access To The World Beyond His Neighborhood. With Money He Can Overcome Almost Every Tangible Obstacle Of Communication, He Can Travel, Buy Books And Periodicals, And Bring Within The Range Of His Attention Almost Any Known Fact Of The World.

We Are Concerned In Public Affairs, But Immersed In Our Private Ones.

It Was In The Recognition That There Is In Each Man A Final Essence, That Is To Say An Immortal Soul Which Only God Can Judge, That A Limit Was Set Upon The Dominion Of Men Over Men.

It Is Perfectly True That That Government Is Best Which Governs Least. It Is Equally True That That Government Is Best Which Provides Most.

A State Is Absolute In The Sense Which I Have In Mind When It Claims The Right To A Monopoly Of All The Force Within The Community, To Make War, To Make Peace, To Conscript Life, To Tax, To Establish And Disestablish Property, To Define Crime, To Punish Disobedience, To Control Education, To Supervise The Family, To Regulate Personal Habits, And To Censor Opinions. The Modern State Claims All Of These Powers, And, In The Matter Of Theory, There Is No Real Difference In The Size Of The Claim Between Communists, Fascists, And Democrats.

A More Conscious Life Is One In Which A Man Is Conscious Not Only Of What He Sees, But Of The Prejudices With Which He Sees It.

The Study Of Error Is Not Only In The Highest Degree Prophylactic, But It Serves As A Stimulating Introduction To The Study Of Truth.

Where There Is No Danger Of Overt Action There Is Rarely Any Interference With Freedom. That Is Why There Has So Often Been Amazing Freedom Of Opinion Within An Aristocratic Class Which At The Same Time Sanctioned The Ruthless Suppression Of Heterodox Opinion Among The Common People. When The Inquisition Was Operating Most Effectively Against The Bourgeois Who Had Lapsed Into Heresy, The Princes Of The Church And The Nobles Enjoyed The Freedom Of The Renaissance.

Since My Moral System Rests On My Accepted Version Of The Facts, He Who Denies My Moral Judgments Or My Version Of The Facts, Is To Me Perverse, Alien, Dangerous. How Shall I Account For Him? The Opponent Has Always To Be Explained, And The Last Explanation That We Ever Look For Is That He Sees A Different Set Of Facts. Such An Explanation We Avoid, Because It Saps The Very Foundation Of Our Own Assurance That We Have Seen Life Steadily And Seen It Whole.

The Radical Novelty Of Modern Science Lies Precisely In The Rejection Of The Belief... That The Forces Which Move The Stars And Atoms Are Contingent Upon The Preferences Of The Human Heart.

It Has Been The Fashion To Speak Of The Conflict Between Human Rights And Property Rights, And From This It Has Come To Be Widely Believed That The Use Of Private Property Is Tainted With Evil And Should Not Be Espoused By Rational And Civilized Men... The Only Dependable Foundation Of Personal Liberty Is The Personal Economic Security Of Private Property. The Good Society.

Life Is An Irreversible Process And For That Reason Its Future Can Never Be A Repetition Of The Past.

The Prophecy Of A World Moving Toward Political Unity Is The Light Which Guides All That Is Best, Most Vigorous, Most Truly Alive In The Work Of Our Time.

The Modern World Is Reversing The Old Virtues Of Authority. They Aimed Deliberately To Make Men Unworldly. They Did Not Aim To Found Society On A Full Use Of The Earth's Resources; They Did Not Aim To Use The Whole Nature Of Man; They Did Not Intend Him To Think Out The Full Expression Of His Desires. Democracy Is A Turning Point Upon Those Ideals In A Pursuit, At First Unconsciously, Of The Richest Life That Men Can Devise For Themselves.

Whenever We Accept An Idea As Authority Instead Of As Instrument, An Idol Is Set Up. We Worship The Plough, And Not The Fruit.

Men Have Been Barbarians Much Longer Than They Have Been Civilized. They Are Only Precariously Civilized, And Within Us There Is The Propensity, Persistent As The Force Of Gravity, To Revert Under Stress And Strain, Under Neglect Or Temptation, To Our First Natures.

A Country Survives Its Legislation. That Truth Should Not Comfort The Conservative Nor Depress The Radical. For It Means That Public Policy Can Enlarge Its Scope And Increase Its Audacity, Can Try Big Experiments Without Trembling Too Much Over The Result. This Nation Could Enter Upon The Most Radical Experiments And Could Afford To Fail In Them.

The Press Does Not Tell Us What To Think, It Tells Us What To Think About.

The Predominant Teachings Of This Age Are That There Are No Limits To Man's Capacity To Govern Others And That, Therefore, No Limitations Ought To Be Imposed Upon Government. The Older Faith, Born Of Long Ages Of Suffering Under Man's Dominion Over Man, Was That The Exercise Of Unlimited Power By Men With Limited Minds And Self-regarding Prejudices Is Soon Oppressive, Reactionary, And Corrupt. The Older Faith Taught That The Very Condition Of Progress Was The Limitation Of Power To The Capacity And The Virtue Of Rulers.

It Is Often Very Illuminating...to Ask Yourself How You Got At The Facts On Which You Base Your Opinion. Who Actually Saw, Heard, Felt, Counted, Named The Thing, About Which You Have An Opinion?

All Achievement Should Be Measured In Human Happiness.

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Whether Or Not Birth Control Is Eugenic, Hygienic, And Economic, It Is The Most Revolutionary Practice In The History Of Sexual Morals.

In Places Where Men Are Used To Differences They Inevitably Become Tolerant.

The Unions Are The First Feeble Effort To Conquer The Industrial Jungle For Democratic Life. They May Not Succeed, But If They Don't Their Failure Will Be A Tragedy For Civilization, A Loss Of Cooperative Effort, A Baulking Of Energy, And The Fixing In American Life Of A Class-structure.

In The Blood Of The Martyrs To Intolerance Are The Seeds Of Unbelief

A Rational Man Acting In The Real World May Be Defined As One Who Decides Where He Will Strike A Balance Between What He Desires And What Can Be Done.

The Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.

A Useful Definition Of Liberty Is Obtained Only By Seeking The Principle Of Liberty In The Main Business Of Human Life, That Is To Say, In The Process By Which Men Educate Their Responses And Learn To Control Their Environment.

A Free Press Is Not A Privilege But An Organic Necessity In A Great Society. Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern. For There Is No Adequate Way In Which It Can Keep Itself Informed About What The People Of The Country Are Thinking And Doing And Wanting.

Before You Can Begin To Think About Politics At All, You Have To Abandon The Notion That There Is A War Between Good Men And Bad Men.

Where Love Exists With Self-respect And Joy, Where A Fine Environment Is Provided For The Child, Where The Parents Live Under Conditions That Neither Stunt The Imagination Nor Let It Run To Uncontrolled Fantasy, There You Have The Family That Modern Men Are Seeking To Create.

Many A Time I Have Wanted To Stop Talking And Find Out What I Really Believed.

Newspapers Necessarilyand Inevitably Reflect, And Therefore, In Greater Or Lesser Measure, Intensify, The Defective Organization Of Public Opinion.

Unless The Reformer Can Invent Something Which Substitutes Attractive Virtues For Attractive Vices, He Will Fail.

When Distant And Unfamiliar And Complex Things Are Communicated To Great Masses Of People, The Truth Suffers A Considerable And Often A Radical Distortion. The Complex Is Made Over Into The Simple, The Hypothetical Into The Dogmatic, And The Relative Into An Absolute.

Creative Ideas Come To The Intuitive Person Who Can Face Up To The Insecurity Of Looking Beyond The Obvious.

Men Command Fewer Words Than They Have Ideas To Express, And Language, As Jean Paul Said, Is A Dictionary Of Faded Metaphors.

The First Principle Of A Civilized State Is That Power Is Legitimate Only When It Is Under Contract.

The Private Citizen, Beset By Partisan Appeals For The Loan Of His Public Opinion, Will Soon See, Perhaps, That These Appeals Are Not A Compliment To His Intelligence, But An Imposition On His Good Nature And An Insult To His Sense Of Evidence.

Once You Touch The Biographies Of Human Beings, The Notion That Political Beliefs Are Logically Determined Collapses Like A Pricked Balloon.

A Large Plural Society Cannot Be Governed Without Recognizing That, Transcending Its Plural Interests, There Is A Rational Order With A Superior Common Law.

The True Speech Of Man Is Idiomatic, If Not Of The Earth And Sky, Then At Least Of The Saloon And The Bleachers.

What We Call A Democratic Society Might Be Defined For Certain Purposes As One In Which The Majority Is Always Prepared To Put Down A Revolutionary Minority.

It Seems Like Topsy-turvyland To Make Reason Serve The Irrational. Yet That Is Just What It Has Always Done, And Ought Always To Do.

The Principles Of The Good Society Call For A Concern With An Order Of Being - Which Cannot Be Proved Existentially To The Sense Organs - Where It Matters Supremely That The Human Person Is Inviolable, That Reason Shall Regulate The Will, That Truth Shall Prevail Over Error.

Robinson Crusoe, The Self-sufficient Man, Could Not Have Lived In New York City.

Ignore What A Man Desires And You Ignore The Very Source Of His Power.

It Is At The Cross-roads That Skepticism Is Born, Not In A Hermitage.

Our Life Is Managed From Behind The Scenes: We Are Actors In Dramas That We Cannot Interpret. Of Almost No Decisive Event Can We Say: This Was Our Own Choosing. We Happen Upon Careers, Necessity Pushing, Blind Inclination Pulling. If We Stop To Think We Are Amazed That We Should Be What We Are.

It Is Impossible To Abolish Either With A Law Or An Axe The Desires Of Men.

Great Men, Even During Their Lifetime, Are Usually Known To The Public Only Through A Fictitious Personality.

Politicians Tend To Live "in Character" And Many A Public Figure Has Come To Imitate The Journalism That Describes Him.

Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.

Lives Of Others

A Free Press Is Not A Privilege But An Organic Necessity In A Great Society. ... A Great Society Is Simply A Big And Complicated Urban Society.

The Whole Speculation About Morality Is An Effort To Find A Way Of Living Which Men Who Live It Will Instinctively Feel Is Good.

We Are Quite Rich Enough To Defend Ourselves, Whatever The Cost. We Must Now Learn That We Are Quite Rich Enough To Educate Ourselves As We Need To Be Educated.

Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created. The Average Conservative Is A Slave To The Most Incidental And Trivial Part Of His Forefathers Glory - To The Archaic Formula Which Happened To Express Their Genius Or The Eighteenth-century Contrivance By Which For A Time It Was Served.

Usually It Is The Stereotyped Shape Assumed By An Event At An Obvious Place That Uncovers The Run Of The News.

There Comes A Time When Even The Reformer Is Compelled To Face The Fairly Widespread Suspicion Of The Average Man That Politics Is An Exhibition In Which There Is Much Ado About Nothing.

There Is Nothing Disastrous In The Temporary Nature Of Our Ideas. They Are Always That. But There May Very Easily Be A Train Of Evil In The Self-deception Which Regards Them As Final. I Think God Will Forgive Us Our Skepticism Sooner Than Our Inquisitions.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Is No Crusader. He Is No Tribune Of The People. He Is No Enemy Of Entrenched Privilege. He Is A Pleasant Man Who, Without Any Important Qualifications For The Office, Would Very Much Like To Be President.

The Emancipated Woman Has To Fight Something Worse Than The Crusted Prejudices Of Her Uncles; She Has To Fight The Bewilderment In Her Own Soul.

The Host Of Men Who Stand Between A Great Thinker And The Average Man Are Not Automatic Transmitters. They Work On The Ideas; Perhaps That Is Why A Genius Usually Hates His Disciples.

It Is In Time Of Peace That The Value Of Life Is Fixed. The Test Of War Reveals It.

When Men Can No Longer Be Theists, They Must, If They Are Civilized, Become Humanists.

The Best Servants Of The People, Like The Best Valets, Must Whisper Unpleasant Truths In The Master's Ear. It Is The Court Fool, Not The Foolish Courtier, Whom The King Can Least Afford To Lose.

The Effort To Calculate Exactly What The Voters Want At Each Particular Moment Leaves Out Of Account The Fact That When They Are Troubled The Thing The Voters Most Want Is To Be Told What To Want.

Industry Is A Better Horse To Ride Than Genius.

Only The Very Rarest Of Princes Can Endure Even A Little Criticism, And Few Of Them Can Put Up With Even A Pause In The Adulation.

The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.

It Is Not The Idea As Such Which The Censor Attacks, Whether It Be Heresy Or Radicalism Or Obscenity. He Attacks The Circulation Of The Idea Among The Classes Which In His Judgment Are Not To Be Trusted With The Idea.

For The Newspaper Is In All Literalness The Bible Of Democracy, The Book Out Of Which A People Determines Its Conduct. It Is The Only Serious Book Most People Read. It Is The Only Book They Read Every Day.

Behind Innocence There Gathers A Clotted Mass Of Superstition, Of Twisted And Misdirected Impulse; Clandestine Flirtation, Fads, And Ragtime Fill The Unventilated Mind.

Inevitably Our Opinions Cover A Bigger Space, A Longer Reach Of Time, A Greater Number Of Things, Than We Can Directly Observe. They Have, Therefore, To Be Pieced Together Out Of What Others Have Reported And What We Can Imagine.

The Search For Moral Guidance Which Shall Not Depend Upon External Authority Has Invariably Ended In The Acknowledgment Of Some New Authority.

The Balancing Of Present Wants Against The Future Is Really The Central Problem Of Ethics.

The Unexamined Life, Said Socrates, Is Unfit To Be Lived By Man. This Is The Virtue Of Liberty, And The Ground On Which We May Justify Our Belief In It, That It Tolerates Error In Order To Serve Truth.

Culture Is The Name For What People Are Interested In, Their Thoughts, Their Models, The Books They Read And The Speeches They Hear, Their Table-talk, Gossip, Controversies, Historical Sense And Scientific Training, The Values They Appreciate, The Quality Of Life They Admire. All Communities Have A Culture. It Is The Climate Of Their Civilization.

Whereas Each Man Claims His Freedom As A Matter Of Right, The Freedom He Accords To Other Men Is A Matter Of Toleration.

In The End, Advertising Rests Upon The Fact That Consumers Are A Fickle And Superstitious Mob, Incapable Of Any Real Judgment As To What It Wants Or How It Is To Get What It Thinks It Likes.

Without Some Form Of Censorship, Propaganda In The Strict Sense Of The Word Is Impossible. In Order To Conduct Propaganda There Must Be Some Barrier Between The Public And The Event.

Nothing Is Easier Than To Simplify Life And Them Make A Philosophy About It. The Trouble Is That The Resulting Philosophy Is True Only Of That Simplified Life.

I Generalized Rashly: That Is What Kills Political Writing, This Absurd Pretence That You Are Delivering A Great Utterance. You Never Do. You Are Just A Puzzled Man Making Notes About What You Think. You Are Not Building The Pantheon, Then Why Act Like A Graven Image? You Are Drawing Sketches In The Sand Which The Sea Will Wash Away.

If The Estimate Of The House Committee On Foreign Affairs Is Correct, Then Russia Has Lost The Cold War In Western Europe.

Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created.

The Chief Element In The Art Of Statesmanship Under Modern Conditions Is The Ability To Elucidate The Confused And Clamorous Interests Which Converge Upon The Seat Of Government. It Is An Ability To Penetrate From The Na?ve Self-interest Of Each Group To Its Permanent And Real Interest. Statesmanship Consists In Giving The People Not What They Want But What They Will Learn To Want.

In Making The Great Experiment Of Governing People By Consent Rather Than By Coercion, It Is Not Sufficient That The Party In Power Should Have A Majority. It Is Just As Necessary That The Party In Power Should Never Outrage The Minority.

The Disesteem Into Which Moralists Have Fallen Is Due At Bottom To Their Failure To See That In An Age Like This One The Function Of The Moralist Is Not To Exhort Men To Be Good But To Elucidate What The Good Is. The Problem Of Sanctions Is Secondary.

The Systems Of Stereotypes May Be The Core Of Our Personal Tradition, The Defenses Of Our Position In Society. They Are An Ordered More Or Less Consistent Picture Of The World, To Which Our Habits, Our Tastes, Our Capacities, Our Comforts And Our Hopes Have Adjusted Themselves. They May Not Be A Complete Picture Of The World, But They Are A Picture Of A Possible World To Which We Are Adapted. In That World, People And Things Have Their Well-known Places, And Do Certain Expected Things. We Feel At Home There. We Fit In. We Are Members.

Every Fairly Intelligent Person Is Aware That The Price Of Respectability Is A Muffled Soul Bent On The Trivial And The Mediocre.

The Only Feeling That Anyone Can Have About An Event He Does Not Experience Is The Feeling Aroused By His Mental Image Of That Event ... For It Is Clear Enough That Under Certain Conditions Men Respond As Powerfully To Fictions As They Do To Realities.

The News Is Not A Mirror Of Social Conditions, But The Report Of An Aspect That Has Obtruded Itself.

To Keep A Faith Pure, Man Had Better Retire To A Monastery.

The Invisible Government [bosses] Is Malign. But The Evil Doesn't Come From The Fact That It Plays Horse With The Newtonian Theory Of The Constitution. What Is Dangerous About It Is That We Do Not See It, Cannot Use It, And Are Compelled To Submit To It.

When Philosophers Try To Be Politicians They Generally Cease To Be Philosophers.

Though It Is Disguised By The Illusion That A Bureaucracy Accountable To A Majority Of Voters, And Susceptible To The Pressure Of Organized Minorities, Is Not Exercising Compulsion, It Is Evident That The More Varied And Comprehensive The Regulation Becomes, The More The State Becomes A Despotic Power As Against The Individual. For The Fragment Of Control Over The Government Which He Exercises Through His Vote Is In No Effective Sense Proportionate To The Authority Exercised Over Him By The Government.

A Man Who Has Humility Will Have Acquired In The Last Reaches Of His Beliefs The Saving Doubt Of His Own Certainty.

Here Lay The Political Genius Of Franklin Roosevelt: That In His Own Time He Knew What Were The Questions That Had To Be Answered, Even Though He Himself Did Not Always Find The Full Answer.

Modern Men Are Afraid Of The Past. It Is A Record Of Human Achievement, But Its Other Face Is Human Defeat.

Men Fall Into A Routine When They Are Tired And Slack: It Has All The Appearance Of Activity With Few Of Its Burdens.

Successful Democratic Politicians Are Insecure And Intimidated Men. They Advance Politically Only As They Placate, Appease, Bribe, Seduce, Bamboozle, Or Otherwise Manage To Manipulate The Demanding And Threatening Elements In Their Constituencies. The Decisive Consideration Is Not Whether The Proposition Is Good But Whether It Is Popular -- Not Whether It Will Work Well And Prove Itself But Whether The Active Talking Constituents Like It Immediately. Politicians Rationalize This Servitude By Saying That In A Democracy Public Men Are The Servants Of The People.

Unless Democracy Is To Commit Suicide By Consenting To Its Own Destruction, It Will Have To Find Some Formidable Answer To Those Who Come To It Saying: I Demand From You In The Name Of Your Principles The Rights Which I Shall Deny To You Later In The Name Of My Principles.

Genius Sees The Dynamic Purpose First, Find Reasons Afterward.

Private Property Was The Original Source Of Freedom. It Still Is Its Main Bulwark.

The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opponents Than From His Fervent Supporters. For His Supporters Will Push Him To Disaster Unless His Opponents Show Him Where The Dangers Are. So If He Is Wise He Will Often Pray To Be Delivered From His Friends, Because They Will Ruin Him. But Though It Hurts, He Ought Also To Pray Never To Be Left Without Opponents; For They Keep Him On The Path Of Reason And Good Sense.

What Each Man Does Is Based Not On Direct And Certain Knowledge, But On Pictures Made By Himself Or Given To Him...

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